Da Lat (Central Highlands)

Two days ago we took a comfortable bus ride for 7 hours from hot, hot Ho Chi Minh City up to the city of Da Lat, located in the Central Highlands at 5000 feet elevation. It is a relief to be in the fresher air of the highlands . The bus ride passed beautiful, thickly forested mountains on the way up to the highlands. Here in the highlands there is quite a bit of agriculture, lots of vegetable farming and some coffee growing areas.

Da Lat seems to be a city of about 100,000 people. Da Lat was a popular escape from the hot, muggy lowland coastal region for the French during the colonial period, and it still plays the role for the tourists today. There are many hotels and we found an inexpensive family run one with friendly service and a great breakfast included. We have been enjoying the fruit, eggs, French bread with butter and jam, and especially the extra strong coffee with sweet milk typical in Vietnam. After eating a couple of times in nicer restaurants where you get small portions at high prices, we have settled into a routine of eating delicious, nourishing pho noodle soups and great French bread sandwiches bought on the streets. We have delicious pho in a tiny family owned restaurant with a few rickety tables and stools. The food is cooked and prepared right in the open as you walk into the place. The pho here costs 20,000 dong with meat or 15,000 without, and the sandwiches cost 5000 dong. $1 U.S. =17,400 Vietnamese dong at present.

Yesterday, Ana and I rented a motorbike and rode out to a mountain outside of the city. We parked the bike at the foot of the mountain near a village of the Lat minority people, and started walking up a dirt road and then a poorly marked trail. We walked for a couple of hours and then the last half hour was very steep uphill through dense forest leading to a grassy area at the top with a splendid view of the surrounding countryside and of Da Lat about 15 kilometers away.

Cu Chi tunnels and the American War

Today we took a tour to the Cu Chi tunnels located about 60 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City. This is an area where the Vietcong had, over many years, built an extensive underground tunnel system, a 200 kilometer underground network designed to help them fight the war against the American aggressors. Our van, filled with about 14 tourists, headed out of the city. We stopped for about an hour at a workplace where victims of agent orange make beautiful wall hangings. Then we got in a terrible traffic jam and inched our way out of Ho Chi Minh City for about one and a half hours. Finally we broke through the jam and were soon out in the beautiful tropical countryside. We passed a former U.S. infantry base and then arrived at one of two Cu Chi tunnel sites for tourists.

According to our tour guide, the people of Saigon were against the Vietcong and supported the Americans because they brought a lot of business opportunities and provided decent public services. He told us that when the war ended, the Communists took over and expropriated people with property and money and also sent many to "re-education camps". The harsh conditions resulted in hundreds of thousands of boat people leaving Vietnam. He lamented that Saigon had more than doubled in population since 1975 to 8.5 million people. He said that now that everybody can buy a Chinese made motor scooter for about $400, the traffic is a nightmare. Nobody walks. It seems that with full bellies, a motor scooter to get around in, and time to relax with friends drinking iced coffee, life is more than bearable for many, at least in the areas we have visited so far in the south.

Our guide took us around showing us the entrances to the tunnels and how the guerrillas lived, explained how they built the tunnels and protected themselves from attempts to destroy the tunnels. Women participated fully in the war effort. We saw a video, a kind of a propaganda film made in the 60s about the Vietcong struggle and their heroism. We entered one of the tunnels and I crawled in the pitch black tunnel for about 25 feet to arrive at the other side. (It was a claustrophobic and unpleasant experience. We were disappointed when our guide later told us that these are not the real tunnels and that to see the real ones, one needed to go about 20 kilometers further to another part of the tunnel system. Of course, that would cost extra money. But they did seem authentic to me, so I wonder what the real story is.

We also saw a destroyed U.S. tank, a guerrilla kitchen area, several kinds of bombs and guns used during the war, and B52 craters left over from the war. Numerous kinds of booby traps set by the Vietcong were shown and explained as well.

In the afternoon, we were dropped off at the War Museum which offers a well-done account of the war and the resistance fight through photos, exhibits of war materials, children's anti-war drawings, and a section describing the horrific prison system run by the French and later the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies. The focus was on the atrocities committed by the U.S. and there is also a section on the international solidarity efforts that went on in support of the Vietnamese people.

I felt very emotional about being in this museum. In 1968 during the Vietnam war, I was 17 years old. Although I was able to obtain a conscientious objector status to avoid military service (with the help of some good draft counseling from the American Friends Service Committee), some of my classmates got drafted and some served in Vietnam. I was very active in opposing the war from 1965 to the end of the war in 1975, and today's visit to the museum was very moving for me. Long live the Vietnamese people and all peace-loving people! Convert military spending to spending for human needs!

Vietnamese people work long hours

Vietnamese people work extremely long hours either as self-employed or for a small business. There is no such thing as overtime pay and people often work seven days a week. There are so many small family owned businesses and individuals hawking food, lottery tickets or other things on the streets. The last couple days in Long Xuyen I have gone out about 5:30 am to get my exercise. It is about the only time that it is cool enough to do exercise (feels about 80 degrees.) Even though it is still dark, there are many people in the park exercising, doing tai chi, aerobic types of activities, stretching or just walking. The park is a long skinny strip, the median area of a boulevard that stretches several blocks beginning from a market by the river. After I stretch, I go jogging through city streets being careful not to get run over by a motorcycle or bicycle in the semi-dark streets. People are already up preparing their little restaurant or small business for the days activity. Some are sweeping the sidewalk in front of their business or cleaning and setting up their restaurant or street stall. After about a mile, I find a paved path that runs along a canal. There are houses along this path and I pass people up cleaning and preparing breakfast outside. After about 20 minutes of jogging, it is time to turn around and jog back to the hotel, shower and have that wonderful buffet breakfast offered on the roof with a beautiful view.

Today we took a minibus back to Ho Chi Minh City. We arrived in the sweltering, noisy, crowded city about 2 pm, and negotiated with two motorcycle taxi drivers to bring us from the bus station to a hotel area described as a kind of a backpacker ghetto with lots of hotels, restaurants, and agencies hawking various tours and trips. There are many Western tourists here, most of them Europeans, Israelis and Australians and they a lot younger then we are. We mounted the cycletaxis with all our gear and the drivers gunned their way through the crowded blazing streets, weaving in and out of the traffic and passing everybody. It is amazing how at intersections or at traffic circles the drivers manage to get through without smashing into oncoming traffic, kind of like two opposing waves of water that manage to get through each other. It was a harrowing experience for us and we were thankful we made it safely to look for a hotel in the sweltering heat.

Visiting An Giang University

We are staying now in the city of Long Xuyen, not far from the Cambodian border in the Mekong Delta. Today I observed two English classes at the university. The students are all about 18 to 20 years old, mostly female. I was amazed at how advanced their communication skills are. The students speak English very well, seem self-confident, and love to participate in the discussions. The teachers used teaching methods similar to the communicative and more student-centered approach used frequently in the ESL department at City College. In the first class, the instructor used power point to introduce vocabulary and discussions regarding money,banking and income issues. The teacher had the students discuss how to tell if someone is rich and what are the best ways to save money. The students were then asked to tell their partner (randomly chosen) a good way to make money and the partner had to respond why this was not a good reason. This was to practice how to disagree politely. Then the students had to nominate the five best ways to get rich and finally they got to vote on the very best way to get rich. In the second class I observed, 6 groups of students had to do a skit in which two people broke up with their boyfriend or girlfriend. The students were very enthusiastic and laughed a lot.

The next day, Ana and I had lunch with several of the faculty members. Three were from the U.S.including one of Vietnamese background, another was from Australia and three from the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam. They seem like good friends and several were going on an outing to the beach on the weekend. One of them is doing research on agriculture and was telling us about the heavy use of insecticides and its dangers. The insecticides are necessary because the new kind of rice, although it is more productive because it can be harvested several times a year, requires much more insecticide than the one crop a year kind of rice formerly used. Vietnam has become the second largest rice exporter in the world after the U.S., but at a great cost to the environment and to the small farmers who are being squeezed, according to this source. An Giang University has a large department devoted to studying agriculture.

An English student that we met last night was telling us that some students do not have to pay tuition depending on what your major is. The students have to pass very rigorous tests and be among the best in their high school in order to be eligible to study here.

Mekong Delta Experiences

Leaving the city of My Tho, we hired two motorcycles taxis to take us to a home stay on one of the Mekong tributaries, about 40 miles away. At first we enjoyed the ride as we traveled over the new bridge to Ben Tre, and then along a paved road past beautiful scenery with lush foliage, some rice paddies, and over several channels and small rivers; the road traffic was almost completely motor-bikes and bicycles. It is very common to see women driving their motorbikes. Often there are two, three even four people (the whole family) on a motorbike. But then the trip turned difficult, taking a hot, dusty, dirt road. It was the middle of the day and burning hot. The road was quite bumpy and my reading glasses fell out of my shirt pocket. We stopped but I couldn't find them and we continued on. We stopped for lunch in a dusty, forlorn looking village at a restaurant with a pile of coconuts in front. There was nobody eating in this place and I had my doubts about the cleanliness, but the woman who attended us made a good impression. We invited the drivers to have lunch with us and we all had pho, the great Vietnamese rice noodle soup made with beef or chicken. Ana and I asked for the soup without the beef. The soup comes with a plate of greens including sprouts and some sauces that you may add to your soup. It is really delicious and helps fight off dehydration.

After crossing another river (the Mekong again?) on a ferry we turned off the main road and followed a narrow paved path only about 4 feet wide at the most, past houses, forests, fields, fruit trees, and many people. It was frightening to go over the high narrow bridges over the canals riding on these bikes. We finally arrived at our place and checked into a simple but clean room with a fan and mosquito netting. The place is also has a nursery growing different kinds of flowers and is owned by ex Vietcong fighters who also play some traditional Vietnamese music. We listened to some of the music, but unfortunately were unable to communicate due to language difficulties.

First days in the Mekong Delta

We are staying a couple of days in My Tho, a city on the Mekong River about 75 kilometers (2 hours by bus) from Ho Chi Minh City. We have a very nice hotel, clean with an airy room and a balcony overlooking the wide river, for about $15 U.S. a night. The view is magnificent and we get a nice breeze. We can observe the river traffic and all what's happening on the river. It is time to relax.

The people are very friendly in this town in spite of our language difficulties. I am trying to teach myself some Vietnamese with the help of my guide book and some of the Vietnamese we have met. I use a lot of sign language, too. Another difficult thing is to cross the street, which makes it hard to go for a walk or a run. There is a constant flow of traffic, mostly motorbikes and some bicycles and there are almost no traffic lights. To cross the street, one moves slowly into the flow and the bikes weave around you. It is a little unnerving. Since the traffic is constantly moving, there is less gas consumption that way.

In the afternoon we visited a snake farm run near My Tho. The place is run by the Vietnamese army which breeds the snakes and uses the venom from the cobras to make anti-venom medicine and also sells the snakes for food. The huge pythons are in miserable small cages. There are hundreds of cobras of many colors and sizes, many in its own small screened cage so that you can see them close up if you like. But the most amazing thing was to see hundreds of cobras swimming in an area the size of a small pool with an island in the middle. You have nothing to protect you except a five foot wall that the snakes are unable to climb over.

Vietnam: first impressions

Yesterday we flew from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City. We are staying in a small room in a small guest house tucked away off an ally near the heart of this crowded city. This morning we began a long walk at 6:30 am and walked around for about three hours. First we went through a park with many people doing their tai chi and aerobic exercises. Then we made our way to the Saigon river and walked along the river and found the zoo. After visiting the zoo (beautiful well-kept grounds, but not so great conditions for the animals) for a short while, we continued on our way, getting kind of lost for a while and finally found our hotel.

Crossing streets can be very difficult here since there is a never ending flow of traffic, mostly motorbikes. You have to inch your way across, angling downstream, as the flow of motorbikes weaves around you.

After being in India, Vietnam is kind of a relief. We haven't seen homeless people here so far, and it is cleaner too. There is a lot less visible garbage. But it is more difficult to travel here because people don't speak English like in India. Also, India had the very cheap three-wheeled taxis so convenient to get around in.